Say what?

Biden’s Secret Service rental vehicles burst into flames after he left Nantucket vacation

quote:

President Biden's rented Secret Service vehicles burst into flames in a parking lot Monday, just one day after he left his Nantucket vacation.

Biden spent Thanksgiving on the ritzy Massachusetts island with his family last week. The Secret Service rented five vehicles from Hertz to carry the president and his family, and all five of them caught fire in the parking lot, according to footage first obtained by the Nantucket Current.

??

Rental Vehicles...to carry POTATUS and his family??? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!!

quote:

The Secret Service rented five vehicles from Hertz to carry the president and his family

I think the reporters need to investigate a bit more prior to reporting.

I would find it very unlikely that the President (let alone most other SS protectees) are being chauffeured around in rentals from Hertz.

Well, they all love him out there!
Were the rentals electric?
Don’t know about the runway length at Tom Nevers field but the load carrying capacity could be an issue with a c-17 carrying the beast…???

quote:

runway length at Tom Nevers field

How long is Nantucket runway?
Terminal and facilities

It has two asphalt runways: Runway 6/24: 6,303 ft × 150 ft (1,921 m × 46 m), ILS/DME equipped, with approved GPS approaches. Runway 15/33: 4,500 ft × 100 ft (1,372 m × 30 m), has approved GPS approaches.

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
Rental Vehicles...to carry POTATUS and his family??? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!!

My guess is the news got some facts wrong. More likely rental vehicles are used by agents of the advanced team and other support.

China repossessed the Beast.

It will be interesting to see if/when the assorted drive-by-media spin it as the work of MAGA extremists, whether or not they use nearly identical phrasing.

What are the odds of a less than 3 year old car bursting into flames? This is just strange

quote:

Originally posted by Timdogg6:
What are the odds of a less than 3 year old car bursting into flames? This is just strange

I don't know, but Hertz has a pretty large fleet of Teslas now to rent. I rented one a few months ago.

"Footage shows firefighters spraying down the smoldering remains of one vehicle's engine block. The five vehicles included a Chevy Suburban, Ford Explorer, Infiniti QX80, Ford Expedition, and a Jeep Gladiator."

Anybody watching this? Apparently it wasn't enough for him to gut our 401Ks through destroying the economy, now he is encouraging fund managers to prioritize woke investments over financial gain for their investors:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne...nds-ANDY-PUZDER.html


Andy Puzder is a former CEO of CKE Restaurants, chairman of 2ndVote Value Investments, Inc., and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation

If you are among the tens of millions of Americans with a 401(k), you'd better pay attention.

The Biden administration is putting your retirement money at risk in pursuit of their woke leftist agenda.

The evening before Thanksgiving to avoid unwanted attention, Biden's Department of Labor released an Orwellian new rule misnamed 'Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights.'

Don't let the mind-numbingly bureaucratic gobbledygook distract you.

The rule interprets a law that requires fund managers make investment decisions for the sole benefit of the Americans who depend on those assets.

That's certainly both a good and reasonable policy. And at one time, it was bipartisan.

Congress passed ERISA (the Employee Retirement Income Security Act) in 1974. The law makes it crystal clear that those managing such assets must do so 'solely' in the interest of and for the 'exclusive purpose' of 'providing benefits to participants and their beneficiaries.'

This patently clear language provides no basis for investing assets to prioritize – say – saving the planet, achieving 'equity,' or in any way advancing wokeism.

Well, enter the Biden Administration and 'environmental, social and governance' – or ESG – investing.


ESG is a set of ill-defined, non-financial investment criteria used to screen potential investments based on how well a company is pursuing certain social or political goals.

Getting nervous?

ESG gained prominence in 2005 when a United Nations-sponsored group of international investors established six 'Principles for Responsible Investment' (PRI).

The Principles include a pledge to 'incorporate ESG issues into investment analysis and decision-making processes.'

While there is no generally accepted definition, ESG often includes things such as advancing the goal of net zero carbon emissions (a.k.a. destroying America's energy sector and driving up energy prices), hiring to create diversity (a.k.a. discrimination based on race or sex rather than qualifications, merit, or character) and acceding to employee demands (a.k.a. unionization).

According to PRI's website, over 5,000 financial institutions – including almost every major US asset manager – have signed on.

Since then, ESG hasn't built the best track record.

Earlier this year, ESG leader and advocate, the investment company Blackrock, set a record for 'the largest amount of money lost by a single firm over a six-month period' having 'lost $1.7 trillion of clients' money,' according to Bloomberg.

But these ESG losses were not restricted to Blackrock.

As Bloomberg noted in May, '[i]nvestors are yanking cash from the sector at the fastest pace in a year, while two of the biggest exchange-traded funds tracking the industry… have each tumbled at least 24% in 2021'.

Given the obvious financial risks of ESG ideology, in January of 2021 under President Trump's Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, the Labor Department passed a rule restricting ESG investing in ERISA regulated retirement plans.

That rule instructs plan managers to consider only financial performance and risks when making investment decisions.

Explaining the rule, Secretary Scalia wrote that '[a] fiduciary's duty is to retirees alone, because under ERISA one 'social' goal trumps all others—retirement security for American workers.'

Nineteen Republican state attorneys general also took notice. They wrote a letter to BlackRock CEO Laurence D. Fink in August of 2022 warning that his firm's ESG focus appears to violate the 'sole interest rule.'

It's a legal principle that closely tracks with ERISA and it compels fiduciaries to seek financial returns above political or social goals.

In September, the attorneys general for Louisiana and Indiana cautioned their state pension boards that ESG investing may violate their fiduciary duty.

The not-so-subtle warning to fund managers: Don't get carried away with ESG, because you may be liable for losses.

Now, this new Biden rule provides some cover. Democrats wants managers to feel more secure in using investor assets to advance an ESG agenda, which conveniently – surprise, surprise – aligns with the Democrats' political agenda.

And in a rarely matched act of arrogance, they label doing so as, 'prudence.'

The new Biden era rule supposedly 'clarifies that retirement plan fiduciaries can take into account the potential financial benefits of investing in companies committed to positive environmental, social and governance actions.'

Why?

Well, according to Biden's Labor Department, the Trump era rule had a 'chilling effect' on consideration of 'environmental, social and governance factors in investments.'

But that's just not true.

The Trump-era rule permitted consideration of ESG factors as long as doing so was consistent with ERISA's requirement that such investing be 'solely' and for the 'exclusive purpose' of generating financial benefits for retirees.

As Scalia noted, '[s]ometimes, ESG factors will bear on an investment's value' and should be considered. The intent was not to eliminate ESG criteria from consideration when evaluating an investment.

But that clearly was not good enough for a Biden administration desperate to use massive pools of private investor money to fund the businesses they like and punish the ones they don't like.

If that weren't the case, they wouldn't need a new rule.

One Biden Labor Department official said the quiet part out loud when they complained that the Trump rule didn't allow fund managers to consider 'moral' factors when considering their investments.

Whose 'morality' is never made clear.

But Biden Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh said the new rule 'allows plan fiduciaries to consider climate change and other environmental, social and governance factors when they select retirement investments and exercise shareholder rights… '

Of course it does, and there you have it.

A Biden era rule allowing – if not encouraging – asset managers to use retirees' assets to advance the Democrats' political and social agenda in contravention of ERISA's specific statutory language.

This isn't just bad policy (and it is bad policy), it is administrative malfeasance.

It's anti-democratic. It's socialism in sheep's clothing.

Fund managers, who signed on to 'environmental, social and governance' investments be forewarned, ESG investing has been miserably underperforming this year, the Supreme Court has been taking a decidedly negative approach to such administrative overreach and the Secretary of Labor will not always be a Democrat.

We'll all be better off by honoring the Americans whose money has been trusted to the fund managers' hands – and by leaving the woke politics to the politicians.

quote:

Anybody watching this

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yep. That is a the reason I have a self directed retirement account. The less the government is in my business the better. I read about this sometime back in the WSJ.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:

quote:

Anybody watching this

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yep. That is a the reason I have a self directed retirement account. The less the government is in my business the better. I read about this sometime back in the WSJ.

Before seeing this, I always just took whatever investment strategy the fund recommended based on my projected retirement date, trusting them to share my goals of growing my account as much as possible over that timeframe. Now I'm thinking I ought to be paying more attention to what they're doing with it.

Part of my retirement is also in a state employee pension...there's absolutely nothing I can do about that. Thankfully my state's AG seems to be one of the ones who is on the ball and speaking out against it...hopefully that has some impact on what the pension board people are doing with our fund.

My brother does retirement for a living and is a certified financial planner...I think I need to have him educate me about this mess.

Yep. Good idea. While you are at it ask him about strategies with RMDs.

The goverment is always messing around with our money.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
The goverment is always messing around with our money.

This goes beyond that. The actions of Biden and his administration demonstrate a complete disregard for the citizens of this nation. They hate us so much, they want to destroy us.

^^^^^^^^^^^
True I guess I would be more incensed if it applied to me. Believe me I am getting shafted on taxes and other stuff. The PPP program is now prosecuting business owners for fraud. The goverment let tons of these fraudulent loans go through and now are only going after those that ripped off the government for millions. Student loans is another sore point.

quote:

True I guess I would be more incensed if it applied to me

Well, consider it in this light: Biden is attempting to subsidize political goals with privately owned retirement funds across the economy. How does that not affect the environment in which your investments succeed or fail? Independent investing can arguably take advantage of this by concentrating on more purely profitable investments, but those investments are still dependent on the overall economy.

It's not direct, so independent investors will notionally never notice the temperature of the water in the pot increasing.

Meanwhile in China, there are Tanks in the streets to quash the protests calling for Xi Jinping to step down and an end to the 'Zero-COVID' Lockdown policies...

Tanks on the streets spark fears of new Tiananmen Square as Chinese Communists flood cities with police to end unprecedented protests sparked by disastrous zero-Covid policy

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne...ckdown-protests.html

Just had a long and depressing text conversation with my brother. I know next to nothing about money management (apart from spending less than I make), but here's my very uninformed layman's understanding of what he tried to explain to me:

He said this ESG crap has been going on for a long time and has pretty well permeated the market. There are large funds like Blackrock that have pushed it, and it's the reason behind why so many companies are pushing for greater diversity on their boards and championing woke causes...it raises their ESG score which will drive investment from these leftist funds. Which explains all the wokeness being publicly spouted by all these corporations...they don't really care about the cause, it's all about the money...and not money coming from consumers buying their product but rather the investment dollars.

According to my brother, all this rule change does is shelter managers from liability for investing your 401K in funds based on ESG score rather than performance. It's already been going on for so long and had such a significant effect on the market that it's going to have an impact on your investments whether you're buying highly ESG rated funds or not. He said ESG has been a significant factor in the recent downturn.

I'm a pretty simple guy. I believe in honest pay for an honest days work. I'm not interested in making a fast buck by playing money games. The only reason I have money in the market at all is because someday I'd like to retire, and that's the way it's done. It pissess me off to no end that a rich asshole can sit at a desk and jack with my financial future by manipulating the market, and the people who were supposedly elected (even if I didn't vote for them!) to represent our interests don't care enough to do anything about it. In fact they're actively working against my interests so that they can secure the support of a bunch of emotionally disturbed mental midgets who are so narcissistic that they can't even come to terms with the fact that they were born with a particular set of genitalia.